From then to December 31, 2020, Joint Stock Commercial Bank for Investment and Development of Vietnam (BIDV) would deploy a 1 trillion dong credit package with an interest rate of only 7.3 percent per annum to support individual customers to borrow capital for production and business activities to overcome the salty drought in the Mekong Delta and the Highlands. This credit package was to support customers who needed to borrow to build/expand freshwater storage systems, water filtration, and irrigation systems, or invest, convert crops to adapt to climate change, focusing on varieties with salt tolerance. Besides, borrowers under this package would be extended to pay no principal repayment for up to two years, consistent with the investment period, flexible according to customers’ financial capacity and debt repayment capability.
The loan package applied to medium and long-term loans (from 36 months) in the rural agriculture sector affected by drought and/or saline intrusion for both existing and new customers BIDV in the Mekong Delta and Highlands.
Accompanying customers to overcome difficulties caused by the salty drought in 2020, BIDV was committed to supporting customers in both the short and long term to stabilise production and business. To solve the difficulties at present, BIDV considered restructuring the repayment term, exempting/reducing loan interest as well as reducing related transaction fees to minimise production and business costs for customers.
Also, customers were still prioritised to borrow under the short-term business production package named ‘Connecting, Reaching Out’ with a scale of 50 trillion dong (deployed from May 6, 2020, to September 30, 2020). The preferential interest rate was only from six percent per year, applied for up to 12 months.
Customers who borrowed for business and production activities in this period would also be able to participate in many attractive incentive programmes from other products and services to effectively manage personal accounts, such as free maintaining electronic banking services; up to 0.5 percent per annum of interest rate and a chance to win technological prizes when depositing online; discount up to 70 percent for off-line remittance fee; receiving 100 percent value of a top-up card (maximum dong 100,000 per customer) when registering new and top-up phone on BIDV SmartBanking; bonus of up to 500,000 dong by phone card when buying/renewing borrowers’ insurance. In addition, borrowers also enjoyed credit card incentives from time to time.
Since the beginning of 2020, BIDV had disbursed over 34 trillion dong with preferential interest rates from 6.5 percent per year to accompany individual customers in production and business and help customers access to preferential capital sources. All loan packages were interested by customers, supported and quickly ended before maturity.